With This Kiss

pitcher of water she threw over his head, and sometimes it had to do with the time Papa was in the navy. The facts were unimportant.
    It was just one of those things that papas said.
    “Go on,” she told the band of pirates, who were all armed with wooden daggers clenched in their teeth, or at least what teeth they had. Her cousin Cedric was missing almost all of his in front. “It’s your turn. Yell and run about, but don’t forget that when Emily points her rifle at you, you have to fall over and play dead.”
    It was a little irritating how long they each took to die, especially Cedric. Finally, she hissed at him until he stopped twitching and she was able to straighten her crown, put her foot on his stomach, and shout, “Huzzah!” while Emily pranced about with her sword in the air.
    Everyone clapped in a very satisfactory fashion, even though Emily had forgotten a couple of lines of her victory speech, which made Portia cross. She had written the whole piece in iambic pentameter, which they learned all about in the spring by studying Shakespeare, and that wasn’t easy.
    Since she meant to be a writer someday, she knew it was important to master these things. Later that night, in the nursery, she pointed out that Emily could have tried harder.
    “You’re a despot,” Emily said, looking up from her book and scowling at her.
    “I’m an enlightened despot,” Portia retorted. She had just learned that term, and she rather liked it. “Why do you think that all the fathers fell about laughing when Cedric said he was a warrior?” she asked. “I didn’t think it was so funny.”
    “They were drunk, that’s what Nanny said.”
    “Papa was not drunk!”
    “Not Papa,” Emily said with a shrug. “But the other uncles. And maybe Grandpa, too.”
    “Which one?”
    “The duke,” Emily said. “He was laughing very hard, and then he gave the duchess a kiss on her ear—I saw him. That’s not the way that dukes are supposed to behave.”
    “He never behaves like a duke,” Portia said, dismissing that as evidence. “Look at that portrait Mama made of him—the one in the National Gallery. He looks more like a robber baron than a duke.”
    “Do you suppose,” Emily asked, “that they still do… that ?” She waved her hand.
    Portia frowned at her. They had just learned about that from the laundry maid, and while it was rather fascinating to contemplate, obviously no one as old as their grandparents did anything of that nature. “Of course not!” she whispered. “Be careful Nanny doesn’t hear you, or we’ll be in trouble.”
    “Grandpa looked as if he liked kissing Grandma,” Emily said.
    Portia thought about it. The laundry maid had explained about how a husband and wife fit together like puzzle pieces and then kissed, which resulted in children. It seemed rather undignified, and she was pretty sure that their parents had done it only a very few times.
    She couldn’t imagine the duke and duchess doing such a thing, though one had to suppose they had when they were young. “Perhaps Grandmama and Grandpa on the other side,” she decided. “Grandpa the earl. They…” She hesitated, not sure how to explain what she meant.
    “They like each other quite a lot,” Emily said. “Do you suppose that we’ll do that when we’re as old as they are? Grandpa the duke must be, oh, one hundred years old or even more. Parts of his hair are quite silver.”
    “Don’t be silly,” Portia replied. “He told me once that Grandmother stupefied him.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “Makes him go to sleep,” she explained. “You can’t be kissing and so on, if you’re asleep.”
    Portia often knew the answers to questions like that, which was proper given that she was oldest. Just now she didn’t want to talk any longer, so she pushed the window in the nursery open and hung over the sill, smelling the country air. Bats were darting about as if they were weaving lace in the sky.
    Her father’s favorite horse, Daedalus, had escaped from the stables again and was munching on the grass under the shelter of a willow; he would probably end up sleeping there all night. No one worried about Daedalus running away, because he was old and fat and very sweet. All the children had taken their first ride on his back.
    Down by the lake Portia saw the pale green of her mother’s gown. She was with Papa, of course, and as Portia watched, he pulled her into his arms. They must be kissing, though she couldn’t